It's Time for Punitive Voting

It’s time to start punitive voting.

The concept of punitive voting is very simple: If we loose, YOU loose.

As things are now run, Democrats (like Pelosi, Franks, Feinstein, Biden, and even Boxer) think they’ve got Progressives in a corner. After all, who else are we going to vote for? So they toss us the occasional chicken feed while they

vote billions for war and destruction

vote billions for insurance companies that deny health coverage

vote billions for the banksters that rob and plunder America, all

while they deny bankruptcy protection for people who loose their homes because they committed the crime of falling ill,

while they deny environmental protection for a poor earth that is whitering and dying under the unslaught of naked greed

while they do nothing of any serious importance to assure people a life of wellbeing and freedom.

The senawhores and pimprasentatives who do this figure we’ll vote for them anywyays because what are we going to do, vote Republican?

Hey, the way I see it, if you act like a Republican you should be treated like a Republican. We loose anyway, so we might as well kick your sorry ass out.

It may take a cycle or two, but that is the only way to work for change. You can’t plant until your clear.

VOTE PUNITIVE.

P.S. Call up your local congressoid’s office and tell them about the concept. and listen to the stunned silence at the other end. Oh shit......

©Barfo, 2008

The Pig Sings

Barfo QuickNotes takes a quick look at Piglip Palin's first weigh-in .

The Pig Sings

The News: In her first interview without training wheels, Sarah ("Piglips") Palin demonstrated that she is an ignorant idiot.

Ignoring Georgia's assault on S. Ossetia, Palin, accused Russia of having initiated an "unprovoked" invasion of a smaller democratic country. She asserted she understood U.S. relations with Russia because "they're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska ..."

Palin asserted that US troops in Iraq are "on a task that is from God," although in the same breadth she humbly confessed that she "would never presume to know God's will."

But she would never "second-guess" Israel if it decided to bomb Iran. Presumably she would continue not to second-guess nothing as oil soared past $200.00 a barrel, the dollar's value sank to less than a peanut, and the world (including Alaska) plunged into a depression.

The important thing is "that you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on," And that mission is? " "To rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell-bent on destroying our nation. "

"It is for no more politics as usual, and somebody's big fat resume that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment"

The Note: Yeahuh... who needs big fat resumes with degrees in stupid shit like international law and relations, economics, political theory, compartive cultural studies, and all that pointy headed librul crap. Hey!!! One pig's squeal is as good as another's.

Sad thing is must Uhmurkans would agree.

©Barfo, 2008

The New Constables

Don't say Chipster didn't tell ya' -- Constabularism has arrived in uh'Murka.  The crowd control scenes from the Republoscum convention  show that the only difference between the Goon Staat thugs in Iraq and those in St. Paul is the colour of the Keflar.

As this article shall explain the militarization of domestic police forces is the necessary correlative of the constabularization of the military abroad.  Both are aimed at maintaining a state-of-seige in which the civilian population is regarded as a “suspect enemy”.  The result is the brutalization of everything. 

Constables in Minneapolis & Baghdad

For those who haven't been diligently following this blog: What is Constabularism?

"Constabularism" is Neo-con double-talk for imposed regimes of ongoing state-intimidation and oppression.  The word was first forged on the anvils in Smirky Billy Kristol's Cave known as Project for the New American Century, to describe a military strategy formulated "to secure and expand the 'zones of democratic peace."   In case anyone didn't quite get it, this entails equipping and training the military to "shape the security environment in critical regions.”  The shaping entails a blend of military, intelligence, propaganda, policing, and provocation simultaneously working externally from the zone and internally into it.  This "full spectrum" military blurs the distinction between military and civilian, war and peace.   And don't think that "the Homeland" isn't a "critical region."

In order to grasp the malignant perverseness of everything Neo-con scum do, it is necessary to understand what is meant by "zones of democratic peace."  Although claiming lofty antecedents in Kantian idealism, the phrase denotes a post- World War ("II") sociological wackjob which "argues" that states adhering to so-called democratic values tend not to go to war against one another; ergo world peace can be maintained by extending zones of democratic peace! 

Of course, the "hypothesis" is prima facie ridiculous.  "Democracy & Peace!"  Sounds great.  But even to those inculcated with our cultural prejudices, the vexing question arises: what is "democracy"?  The prevailing view among the Zones Crowd is that a "democracy" is any kind of elected government where at least 10 percent of the population votes.  Oh Wow!  By that definition neither Athens nor the Roman Republic would ever have lifted a finger against their neighbours. When it comes to "what is peace?" the whole hypothesis collapses as sociologists make attempts at arguing international law only to peter out into unscientifically reaffirming certain "self-evident" contemporary, plati-truths which may be summed up as "Hitler started it". 

Without pressing the matter too hard, the zones of democratic peace theory is the simply the catch-phrase for a polemic that seeks to extend capitalist materialism as a way of life.  This is nothing particularly new.  It was, after all, the "Liberal Agenda" throughout the 19th century. The Monroe Doctrine was the first Zonal Declaration used to "mark out" the Spanish Empire for the extension of Anglo-American political liberalism and free trade.  If anyone wants to get an idea of what zones of democractic peace look like, they need only go to Latin America.  The post-War neo-liberal agenda simply trumpets an old tune; and it bears remarking that every US president at least since Wilson has blown this horn in one fashion or another.  In other words, the Zones Theory simply asserts that Free Trade and a Global Market Economy will bring peace and prosperity to all but a few.

The best that can be said for this theory is that anyone is free to  proselytize his favorite snake oil.  The murderous neo-con perversion consists in advocating the extension of democratic peace through war and semi-war. Scumbag Kristol's core tenet is that the United States should  “preserve and extend” its military “preeminence” by simultaneously fighting “multiple theater wars” in order to “shape the security environment" and "extend zones of democratic peace."  What Kristol and his PNAC gutter-buddies have done is to fuse "liberalism" with "preeminence" and "extension" with "conquest". It is one thing to commercially compete, to argue,  tempt and persuade; it is quite another to bring "democratic values" at the tip of a sword and under the heel of a boot.


Under the heel of a boot -- because constabularism is the necessary next step in "securing" the peace once democracy has been "extended".

The September 2000 PNAC Report (Rebuilding America's Defenses) emphatically urged that "constabulary missions" were not to be confused with traditional "peacekeeping" roles.  Why not?  Because "peacekeeping", as it has been understood in international law, is basically a question of buffering between belligerents or maintaining basic services and public order during an occupation.  When armed belligerents are involved, the military peacekeepers (like the U.N. White Hats) simply position themselves and patrol between them.  It's a very basic proposition.  In terms of occupation which presupposes a conquest of territory, the peacekeeping basically amounts to being a big proctor over society.  The military stand guard, while the country's normal and domestic police, postal and hospital services continue to operate as usual, reporting to the occupying military authority instead of the erstwhile government.

But taking Israel's "pro-active peacekeeping" in the West Bank as a paradigm, the neocon Report insisted on dispensing with U.N. auspices and limits.  "Shaping the security environment" meant more than patrolling the streets. It included "maintaining" such things as "no-fly zones," conducting its own intelligence operations and be configured with "combat service support personnel with special language, logistics and other support skills."

What has to be understood (and few have) is how the word-drones in the neocon workshop interwove traditionally distinct and even exclusive categories.  The technique was to speak in conjunctives and then to cross over categories which didn't match.  A perhaps key example was their speaking of "extending" and "securing" zones while maintaining operative intelligence capacities. Military intelligence needed for extending (i.e. conquering) territory is one thing, police intelligence for securing occupied (i.e. no longer hostile) territory is quite another.

Traditional military intelligence consists in finding out where the opposing forces are and what their game plan is so that you can go out and kill them before they kill you.  But what is involved in police intelligence, conducted by the military, in an zone which is no longer the theatre of hostilities and the occupants of which are supposedly peaceable (if resentful) civilians?  Traditional police intelligence, even in the 20th century, has been fairly limited.  It involves undercover work with organized crime or drug dealing, keeping tabs on specific suspects and maintaing contacts with various snitches and other  unpleasant people.  None of this is particularly useful in terms of occupying and "securing" a "zone of democratic peace."  Nor was it anything the PNAC needed to fuss about since the use of existing police forces by the occupying authority is well established in practice and under international law. 

No.  Although the PNAC was intentionally confusing issues for those not cued into their neocon speak, they were not in the least concerned with anything that a normal person would think of as "constabulary."  What they meant was that the occupying army would continue to presume that the entire population within the new "democratic zone of peace" was in fact hostile and therefore suspect. But unlike an opposing army or even opposing guerillas, ordinary civilians do not wear uniforms and are not in any particular place "over there" to be shot at.  Unlike ordinary criminal elements, ordinary civilians under occupation aren't doing anything suspect other than being a "potential enemy" in an asymetrical situation.  Of necessity, the mission of the so-called constabulary forces would comprise security-shaping actions against anyone on an ongoing basis.  These actions would include random searches and arbitrary detentions not guided by any constitutional limits; the use of snitches, double agents, to penetrate and provoke;  the use of "turned" locals to act as propagandists or spreaders of disinformation.   In short, in the militarization of civil police procedures and the reduction of civil society to a new form of battlefield. According to the PNAC report itself these "constabulary missions" are "likely" to "generate" violence. Gee.... why would that be?  The purpose of all of this has nothing to do with policing or "intelligence" and everything to do with letting those we have "freed from tyranny" know who their new master is. 

Welcome to Abu Grahib

Thus, under the infected language of the neocon bacillus "securing and extending zones of democratic peace" meant turning a liberated country into a vast terrorized and degraded concentration camp.

 

“Suspect enemy.”  We no longer hear the cynical ambiguity. A suspect is someone who might be something, or might not. Conjoined with “enemy” it does not mean that the person is an enemy, only that he might be.  But the phrase has come to sound and mean the same as “enemy suspect” -- ie. a definite enemy who might be doing something wrong. But in war being an enemy is the “wrong.” What the phrase does is to destroy the concept of civil society.  Societas means and is founded on a principle of unsuspecting fellowship. I see you - you see me and we are friends.  The Fiend's “shaping the security environment”  destroys this principle.

Smirking Billy Kristol and his Gutter-Buddies, understood that such constabulary missions could not be carried out with traditional military hardware alone.  Maintaining no-fly zones and blitzing rural villages off the map can only go so far.  For that reason, the PNAC report called for using "transformation technologies”  and for taking the battle to the internet itself.

What are some of these technologies?  Spy drones, developed by the Israelis, some almost as small as an insect that can fly into homes and hovels to "monitor" and -- hey, why not? -- kill the inhabitants. Sonic Cannon (Long Range Acoustical Device -LARD), which make noise so loud it prevents thinking and turns you into a stupid,  passive zombie.  Slippery Goo, a slick ground spray that is so hyper-slick that it prevents even the minimal friction required to stand.  Not only are you brain-blasted dead, you are become a flopping fish on the ground, if that.  Lastly, there are laser burn rays, that will give you the exquisite feeling of being burned alive, without leaving a mark. All of this is nothing super-secret.  It has been reported quite openly here and there on the internet.  But they are facts that do not exist in the weltanachauung of the New York Times and other official media.

As for the internet, the PNAC Report chapter “Space and Cyber Space” says it all.  The rebuilt mission of the U.S. military was to dominate inner and outer space.  Needless to say, outer space will include more domestic and military spying and inner or cyber space will include proactive disinformation actions, aka “controlling the narrative.”

When any of this is disclosed in the press it is usually done under the myth of developing "more humane or effective" battle-field weapons. Some of it is. But a lot of it is really designed to be used in constabulary missions against essentially defenseless civilians in order to disable them when they get restless and terrorize them thereafter.  

That, in brief, is the New American Century's Global Dystopia.   It ought to be of some concern, therefore, when the following picture appeared in 2004

Is that the sort of Baghdad in Manhattan we want to see?  Not me.  But I did not hear or read a single expression of shock.  On the contrary.  Murkans were relieved that their security was being protected from the never seen but ever potential evil one. 

Cartoon, Le Monde, March 2003

It ought to be of some concern when it gets announced that the LAPD started experimentally using "spy drones" in its "fight against crime."  But the average American is too goddamn stupid to put two and two together. What is taking place is the creation of a full spectrum police force that is a mirror image of the full spectrum military.

The coverage of the "riots" in St. Paul are a case in point.  It is essentially irrelevant who started it, whether the rioters were peaceably assembled until provoked or whether they were lawless anarchists.  It is also not particularly important whether the protesters or the police got out of hand. Riots happen, have happened and always will happened. They are a routine and uninteresting phenomenon. 

What is far more menacing is simply the fact that the police were decked out in body armour, no different from our constabulary forces in Iraq.  This, in itself, indicates a planned level of over-reaction that is not consistent with crowd in control in a civil society.  

But there was more.  The broadband farts that pass for mainstream news aren't worth mentioning.  Speaking duely and dully of 'pepper gas'and mass arrests, even the leftist  or "liberal" press glossed over some salient facts.  The police used used sound canon and stun grenades. They used police intelligence service to invade and disrupt entirely peaceful groups.

The neocon occupation forces that have taken over government are slowly inuring us to accepting the Thug Staat as a normal variant of civil society.  The presence of Borg-Units mechanically stomping down the street, is  seen as "normal".  Tasers are standard equipment, and standard equipment get used as standard operating procedure.  Four years on from 2004 and we now allow stun grenades and sound bombs to be used (at low levels for now to be sure).  Slowly but surely, and with hardly a whimper, we are being trained to live in a zone of democratic peace.

That this brutalization of society is taking place to varying degrees throughout the world is not to say that it is inevitable or desireable.  It is neither, but it does go to show the extent of global corporate police state, the undergirds the glitzy world of malls and consumer glitter.

Some may say that you can't arrest a person without a choke hold or taking him down.  Some may argue that there is no reason to expose our valiant Donutheads to being hit by bricks and bottles.  Some may argue that there is no way to effect mass arrests without herding people like cattle into holding pens.  But all of this misses the point.  Crowd control does not require militarization of government and the  employment of the most intimidating and thuggish means possible.  The message being sent is simply  "Our Boot.  Your Face"

It is a total canard to say that protestors are getting more cunning and violent.  They are not. Most protest assemblies are peaceable, and the scenes from St. Paul show ordinary people of all ages in ordinary clothes.  It was the police who were dressed for violence. 

It is nothing but cowardly ignorance to palaver about "lawn'order" and the intolerability of riots.  Riots are the price of freedom. 

“There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

“It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.”  (Federalist Paper No. 10.)

That was James Madison, the chief architect of our Constitution.  All freedom runs risks.  Risks that people will abuse it or take things too far.  Any assemblage can get rowdy and when it does, it is entirely normal for the police to respond.  If it gets uglier, then the police can respond more forcefully.  But there is no need in a free society to preemptively cage and beat up protestors.  None.

Comparing pictures of Baghdad and St. Paul, of Iraq and Afghanistan and the U.S. it is misplaced to think that "what goes around comes around."  What is seen are aspects of the same underlying phenomenon taking place simultaneously. 

Some may wonder why we use such insulting language against neo-cons.  We do it because it is the only way to approach truth-in-reporting.  The neocons shaping external and domestic policy  are not "political opponents" they are malignant, corrosive, utterly evil excrescences on the body politic.  In their cunning but morally-mindless way they are out to destroy all civic good and will leave a brutalized wasteland where civilization once stood.

©2008 Woodchipgazette

United States Atones for Monroe Doctrine.

Attending a meeting of Euro-leaders at Lake Como in Italy, Vice President Cheney offered official mea culpas for the United States' unilateral embargo of Cuba. "That is no way for a responsible power to conduct itself,” Mr. Cheney said. “And it reflects the discredited notion that any country can claim an exclusion zone of authority, to be held together by muscle and threats.”

©Barfo, 2008

Gordon Brown is a Jackass

The English have always been superb at intoning pious hypocricies; but Gordon Brown has taken the skill into the heights of ludicrous comedy

"When Russia has a grievance over an issue such as South Ossetia, it should act multilaterally by consent rather than unilaterally by force," he said. "My message to Russia is simple: If you want to be welcome at the top table of organisations such as the G8, OECD and WTO, you must accept that with rights come responsibilities."

He talks that way to King George, too?


©Barfo, 2008

Bullying the Bear: Payback and Pipelines

If anyone ever wanted to punch George Bush in his stupid face, kick Cheney in his underbelly nuts, stuff a stinking sock into Richard Perle’s mouth or jam Smirking Billy Kristol’s face into a toilet, he can relax his hostile intentions. The very center of this Administration’s foreign policy has received a massive blow to the gut.

The Administration’s neocon policy of encircling Russia and gutting it from within baited the bear once too often. The bear has struck back and the US can do little but stand aside like a hapless, shown-up punk.

If proof were needed that things were bad, one need only have listened to Condolezza Rice’s hectoring whines chastising Russia’s failure to “integrate” into world institutions and condemning its resort to unilateral and “disproportionate” force against a neighboring country. From an Administration that bully-bellowed it’s “right” to act unilaterally while it incinerated Falluja, Rice’s shamelessness could only provoke acidic ridicule.

If proof were needed that things were edging toward critical, one need only have noticed that virtually no Western media horn published a detailed map of the region

To its credit (mirabilis dictu) the New York Times published a guest editorial by Michael Gorbachev outlining Russia’s complaint against U.S. policies and a decent synopsis by Jad Mouawad of the petro-political issues in the region. I suppose the Times has to do something every once in a while to keep its nose a hair above toney tabloid. Nevertheless, the fact that the western media en masse omitted any mention of the critical gas pipelines that criss-cross the region while they blathered stupidly if tirelessly about who started it and about the ethnic differences between East and West Ossetians was proof certain that Uncle Sam just got his hand mauled as it was clawing the cookie jar.

To appreciate the set back, one has to go back to the sordid foundations of this punk-administration’s foreign policy, so ably set forth in Billy Kristol’s neo- and zio-con PNAC Report of 2000. (Rebuilding America’s Defenses, Project for a New American Cenutry, Sept. 2000)

As enunciated in the Report, the core policy goal for the 21st century was simply and nakedly to “preseve American preeminence through the coming [technological] transformation of war.” America’s policy should be to “preserve and extend” its military “preeminence” by simultaneously fighting “multiple theatre wars” in order to “shape the security environment in critical regions.”

In plain English, the U.S. policy was to go about kicking ass simply to show everyone that it was the meanest punk on the block. This is nothing else that a policy of geo-political terrorism that sought to intimidate anyone and everyone else

The Report identified two critical regions in which this “power projection” needed to take place, viz: (1) “in the Middle East and surrounding energy producing regions” and (2) in a new “American security perimeter in Europe removed eastward.” Although much has been written about the “zionist” prong of PNAC policy which obsesses on Iraq and Iran and the fiction of “islamic terrorism” the more “traditional” prong of this policy was the nibbling away, emasculation and encirclement of Russia.

The Report made unquestionably clear that these twin goals were to be accomplished by unilateral “diplomatic” and military decisions and a corresponding rejection of international structures, treaties and norms. In the neocon mind, institutional structures are useful only as they may temporarily serve to cover and advance an American “projection” of its putative “democratic values.”

Bearing these fundamental in mind, Condi Rice’s sanctimonious condemnation of Russia’s action was nothing other than theatre of the absurd. Just listen to her cant.

Early on in the crisis, Rice intoned that Russia had a “choice to act in a 21st-century way, [and] fully integrate into the international institutions.” (8/15/08) Instead it chose to “to engage in kind of Soviet-style behavior of intimidating and invading allies” like Czechoslovakia. (08/19) “Russia” she said, had backed away from “the principles of cooperation among nations of the communities of states” by “invading small neighbors, bombing civilian infrastructure, going into villages and wreak[ing] havoc and wanton destruction of [the] infrastructure.” (08/19) That same week it was reported that the U.S. had twice killed scores of Afghani children in some village blitzkrieg. Rice’s hypocrisy was so shameless that it is hard to say whether she deserved a medal or a wack upside her prissy face.

There are those who argue that Rice utters this nonsense solely for Americow consumption. After all who else can’t remember back past two weeks and who else wouldn’t choke on the absurd analogy of “Georgia” as a Russian “ally”. Certainly almost no one in Europe -- even if they are intensely anti-Russian -- could swallow such crap.

More interesting than whether Rice swallows her own poop is what her effluences disclose about the inner workings of the neo-con mind. Neo-con pronouncements always inversely reflect the truth. One has to translate.

When Rice speaks of a Russian choice to “fully integrate into ...international institutions” what she really meant was that Russia had a choice to vasselize itself as a quiescent and powerless satrap in America’s neo liberal “institutional empire.” That is the only reason she could go on to say that she felt it was “ very much worthwhile to have given Russia that chance.” Alas! For some perverse reason Russia didn’t particularly jump at the opportunity to be the projectee of American values.

When Rice condemned “the Russian strategic intent of destroying Georgian infrastructure and economic progress,” what she really was moaning about was Russia's spoiling Prince Cheney and Halliburton’s progress at constructing a gas pipeline circumventing both Iran and Russia. In fact, Russia was simply intent on not having its own infrastructure rendered worthless and its own economic progress sent to the back of the Chevron / Unocal / Halliburton bus.

When Rice goes on to assure us that “The culprit here is that Russia overreached, used disproportionate force against a small neighbor, and is now paying the price for that, because Russia’s reputation as a potential partner in international institutions, diplomatic, political, security, economic is frankly in tatters” what she was in fact doing was describing the nature and confessing the failure of America’s own policy.

Over and over again in the past eight years we have seen that with neo-con speak, the condemnation and characterization of “the other” is almost invariably a confession and characterization of self. “They’re seeking to ..." undermine, provoke, destabilize, destroy... always ends up being a completely accurate description of what this Administration itself has done and is up to. The neocon mind is in fact a mental illness, as those who work with paranoids, psychotics and delusional anti-social crazies will readily recognize.

In all events, what Rice has indirectly admitted is that a key prong of US power projection into the “surrounding energy producing regions” is “frankly in tatters”.

Indeed it is. The Bush-Cheney Administration has but a few months to go and it is scrambling to create “realities on the ground.” In so far as the anti-Russian prong of neocon policy is concerned, the Administration certainly has made headway. The Baltic states and Poland been have admitted into NATO, a missile shield against Somalia’s emerging nuclear threat has been forward based in Poland and the Czech Republic. Quite against Russia’s historic interests and alliances, Kosovo was “freed” from Serbia. There can be no doubt that the Administration was egging Georgia on to de-autonomize South Ossetia. As Presdident Medvedev put it

“ The Georgian leadership chose another way. Disrupting the negotiating process, ignoring the agreements achieved, committing political and military provocations, attacking the [Russian] peacekeepers — all these actions grossly violated the regime established in conflict zones with the support of the United Nations and O.S.C.E [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe]. ...It stands quite clear now: a peaceful resolution of the conflict was not part of Tbilisi’s plan.”

Well, Tbilisi had about as much to do with it as the “political and material support provided by its foreign guardians” If Medvedev is to be believed (and there is no reason why he shouldn’t be), Cheney & His Neo Cons were seeking to extend America’s eastward “security perimeter” another nibble or two.

It was too much for the Bear which has now emitted a ROAR that has chilled half of Europe. It has pushed its own security perimeter south and has hung the Sword of Damocles over the CBT pipeline. It has brusquely informed Poland and the Czech Republic that, happy days are again and their cities will once again be targetted by Russian missiles . It is only regrettable that Russia missed a chance for irony by not claiming that the missiles were only directed at the nuclear threat from Brazil. But angry bears aren’t given to irony.

Medvedev made quite clear, that in addition to protecting its southern flank, Russia’s action on behalf of the Ossetians could also be considered pay for Kosovo,

“ [Faced with Tbilisi’s actions] Russia continually displayed calm and patience. We repeatedly called for returning to the negotiating table and did not deviate from this position of ours even after the unilateral proclamation of Kosovo’s independence.”

Contrary to Rice’s disingenuous blather, upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia did earnestly seek to “integrate” itself with the West. What it got was rebuffs, encirclement by US and NATO bases and an insulting 300 million dollar loan collateralized with demands to “open” its economy to savaging and scavenging. Russia has apparently had enough. It is signalling in concrete terms that the days of bullying the bear are over.

And what has the United States shown it can faced with this ROAR? About all it can do is send Condi Rice (and now Cindy McCain!) to hector and whine and accuse the Russians of harboring her own sordid intents. It is truly pathetic, even if Homo Americow can’t figure it out to save his mortgage.

The United States cannot come to the military aid of Georgia. It simply doesn’t have the manpower. Nor does it have the money to double the size of Blackwater, its new Free Market Army. The United States pushed and poked and now it can’t do much more than back off. The United States is close to bankrupt and its fraud riven banking system is dragging the world into recession. The NeoCon Century of Power Projection has turned into little more than a limp dick, high oil and most of our allies in Europe -- still dependent on Russian gas --with very deep second thoughts. All that is needed to make the farce complete is for Israel to discover its long standing “special relationship” with China.

©Barfo, 2008

The Power of the Boot

The Note: Counterpunch, remembers how how a member of Bush’s inner circle (Karl Rove?) told the New York Times’ Ron Suskind in summer 2002 the “the reality-based community” had it all wrong, that the world doesn’t “really work anymore” on the basis of “judicious study of discernible reality.” “We’re an empire now,” he boasted, “and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

The Note: This is purely and simply Orwell's "Image of the State in 1984".

©Barfo, 2008

.

Las Primarias....

"The Primaries" by Francisco Goya y Lucientes

War Mongering On Easter

Except for the Progressive magazine, the USUK press has downplayed Cheney’s war mongering foray in the Holy Land. Instead the headlines announce “Cheney says Independent Palestinian State Overdue.” Yawn.....

What is really going on is that Israel is pressuring a known war hawk to lean on Bush to go to war against Iran.

As reported by the International Herald Tribune: "Welcoming Cheney on Saturday night, Prime Minister Olmert pointedly placed Iran ahead of the peace process as one of "the many items on the common agenda" to be discussed. ' We are both very concerned about Iran; we are anxious to carry on the peace negotiations with the Palestinians.' "

Of course, “We are anxious for peace talks with the Palestinians” is the single most outstanding bull moo of the last 50 years. It is what Israel says every time it takes some action to torpedo whatever umphteenth Peace Plan is on the table. The refrain is intoned so regularly it would not be in the least surprising to learn that it had been incorporated into morning prayers at the Wailing Wall. It is meaningless. It is taken at face value only by morons, and the US mudia.

What Olmert really said was “We are both very concerned about Iran. 00 000 0000000 00 00000 00 000 00000 000000000000 0000 000 000000000000.”

In case one isn't quick enough to understand the meaning of zero, an Israeli official added that Cheney was seen by Jerusalem as "a significant player" who could influence "serious issues that cannot wait." (IHT 03/23/08)

What “serious issues” can’t wait? Certainly not the Peace with Palestine in Our Time issue. While that might be a serious issue, it has been waiting for 60 years. Surely it can wait another nine months until Cheney leaves office.

Well.... what other “serious issues” can’t wait? Peace in Iraq? We all know that Israel has nothing to do with our incursion into Iraq. Global Warming? As if Olmert were pressing Cheney to do something about the Arctic polar bear?

In case anyone still hasn’t figured it out, maybe Cheney’s reply will help. “America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakable, as is our commitment to Israel's right to defend itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other threats from forces dedicated to Israel's destruction,"

Once again, we get fillers packed with zeros. No one denies anyone the right to “defend against” terrorism, whatever that is. The right of self-defense is the bedrock of international relations. Cheney might just as well said he was committed to everyman's right to piss. The question is: against whose wall? Well... for one, against the rocket attacks or more accurately the jumbo firecrackers Hamas is lobbing at Sderot which has forced Israel into aerial bombing of Gaza. That hardly needed clarification. So, discounting the sum of zeros, we are lef with “other threats” allegedly “dedicated to Israel’s destruction.”

I will spare the slow reader any further agony. The issue that “can’t wait” is Iran. What the Israeli official was saying was that Israel regarded Cheney as a key player who could influence President Who himself on an issue that Israel says can’t wait.

The International Herald Tribune, which reported on the Unknown Issue, went on to fill up column inches with the usual blather about Abbas, Hamas, rockets, and the usual nonsense that masquerades as news. But supposing the Times, the Post and the Tribune really can't fathom what is going on, even a moron understands that the vice president doesn’t need to go to Israel to “revitalize” the peace process two weeks after the president himself went to Israel and actually did (or so were told) revitalize it.

In the absence of serious reporting from the Times, the Post, and other outlets of the US mudia, it was left to Mathew Rothschild in the Progressive to note that the sudden departure of Admiral Fallon the other week signaled, if not an imminent attack on Iran, the removal of the safety-lock against doing so.

The missle hatches are open. And on this Sunday, when Christians celebrate the the Suffering and Resurrection of the Prince of Peace, the prince of darkness (while he may attend spurious services in some bunkered conventicle of the US Embassy) is in the Holy Land tete a teting with Israel who wants him to lean on Caesar to attack Iran.

God help us.

© Barfo, 2008

Palm Sunday Pay Day

A friend of mine who is an avowed atheist and thinks religion is a crock of shit has been complaining about Pay Day lenders for a little over a year now. For the silk stocking readership of this blog that might not know what my friend is talking about, a Pay Day lender is a loan shark who specializes in short term, usually two week loans, to tie you over until next pay day. It’s a po’ folk thing.

Suppose a someone makes $100.00 every two weeks. Coming up short at the end of the first week he needs $50.00 to tie him over until next pay day. The smiling Pay Day lender lends him $50.00 for which he will charge him $25.00 in fees and interest. Pay day rolls around and our debtor with a new $100.00 bill in hand goes off to pay his loan ($50.00 + $25.00) and returns home with $25.00 which has to last two weeks. He might as well have gotten hooked on heroin.

While these figures are merely illustrative, a person on minimum wage working 160 hours a grosses $880.00 a month; so the illustration is not that far from reality. Interests and fees charged by Pay Lenders go as high as 800%. [sic].

Is this legal, you might wonder? You bet! A free market is a free market. Reagan taught us all about the evils of Gov’mint meddling and onerous bureaucratic paperwork stifling the “entrepreneurial initiative.”

Well... wait a minute. Wasn’t usury illegal? Wasn’t there a legal cap of 7% interest on loans? Doesn’t the Bible say something about that?

Yes it does. The Old Testament prohibits interest and mandates the forgiveness of debt. Today, Palm Sunday, Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem on an ass, drove the money changers from the outer temple and freed the sacrificial doves from their cages.

But in god-fearing, ever self-righteous, ever self-adulating United States we don’t really give a crap about that, do we? In fact, how many Palm Sunday sermons actually mention Jesus’s act of Compassionate Vandalism?

In State legislatures and in the back-hallways around Congress there are murmurs to the effect that pay day lending is “hurting the economy”. Various compassionate politicians are talking about putting a 36% cap on pay lending. Can’t get more progressive than that, now can you?

Thirty six percent!!! Sho’ is a lot less than 800%. How much is 36% of $50.00 anyways? Answer $18.00. Huh? You mean the outrageous example we started off with was just about the “cure” being proposed by our humanitarians in the Congress?

Go out, wave your psalms, sing your hosannahs, and crucify the widow and the poor man on a cross of interest.

© Barfo, 2008

Pictorial "Balance"

The News: BBC pictures from Gaza show one Israeli woman being led away on a stretcher in bloodless stomach pain agony. (I.e. the theatrics of agony). It also shows one neat and clean rubbelized building with absolutely no photos of maimed children's bodies although it does bother to show one Palestianian funeral where the sand has covered the body so that it looks like a gardening exercise.

The Note: What fucks. This is what passes for "pictorial balance" in the USUK press.

©Barfo, 2008
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Bread Today, Hunger Tomorrow

The News: Explaining why she voted for the communist party in Spain's general election, Gloria Perez chastised president Zapatero for not having done enough "to bring down the price of rents, control mortgage costs, help young people and get us workers better salaries.”

Perez expressed contempt for so-called "tax incentives" and Zapatero's promise of a 400-euro ($620) tax rebate. “That’s bread today, hunger tomorrow. We need reforms that will help us in the long term: better work contracts, better salaries, less inflation.”

The Note: Wouldn't it be nice if workers in the United States had a fraction of Perez's brain power? If they would the "Times" report it?

©Barfo, 2008
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In Torture We Trust

The Thing’s veto of legislation that would have outlawed CIA waterboarding is the shriek from Hell that reflects what this diseased regime has always been about : the poisoining and consumption of everything healthy and decent in the United States.

Howling over the radio waves, Thing salivated that “the fact that we have not been attacked over the past six and a half years is not a matter of chance. ... were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. ... this is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe.”

The Thing never actually asserted that a specific attack had been deterred through the use of torture. Hell’s minion said only that something called our intelligence community “believed” that this “program” had prevented another attack. Once again, injecting poison into the body politic, The Thing sought to induce people into thinking that torture had made us safe. This is a lie.

The truth is that torture does not produce reliable information. The truth is that this diseased regime has been unable to point -- in private or in public -- to a single instance where torture has protected the United States from a specific attack.

So why does Hell’s Bowel Movement insist that torture will make us safe? Does it really believe that? No. It did so because in the festering intestines that are its soul, it knows that the minute the American People buy that lie, they will have been tricked into damning themselves forever. The body politic will have lost all immunity against being consumed entirely.

The instant torture is accepted as capable of protecting us from bad things, it itself becomes a good thing. It will become an accepted routine for bringing about the greater good and we will turn away, dulled and accepting, from the screams and pleadings of the tortured. We will have inverted good and evil. We will have accepted sin.

The moment torture is accepted as protecting us from our “enemies” it becomes acceptable to be used against us, ourselves, in order to ferret out the enemies in our midsts. And not just the known enemies, because the avowed purpose of torture is not to prove what is known but to find out what is unknown. And if not just against known enemies among us, then against any of us to find out who of us is the enemy.

In this way, our acceptance of sin will consume us and the Thing from hell will have triumphed.

Anyone who may have perchanced into this blog, may have wondered why Barfo uses such foul language describing the slime and putrefaction that inhabit our public places. He does so, because this regime and everyone associated with it and everyone who collaborates with it is truly foul and disgusting in every possible way. Foul language is the only way to speak the truth.

©Barfo, 2008

U.S. Claims Asserts Rights to Space and Cyberspace

The News: The US has released a report criticising China's military spending, and voicing concern over advances in space and cyberspace. China rejected the Pentagon report as a "serious distortion of facts" that could harm its relations with the US. "We do not pose a threat to any country. The US should drop its Cold War mentality," the foreign ministry said in a statement. In the report, Washington claimed that the real Chinese defence budget for 2007 was at least double the stated amount.

The Note 1: It never ceases to amaze how diligently the press works to cover Uncle Sam's shame. How come BBC fails to note that the U.S. military budget exceeds by several fold the Chinese and Russian military budgets combined ?

The Note 2: "Space and Cyberspace" -- where have we heard that phrase before? Indeed! in Billy Kristol's zio-con Project for a New American Century. The U.S. had to project its power and be prepared for the new battles in "space and cybespace". So what this means is that the U.S. is upset someone else might get a leg up into the U.S. owned ethers.

©Barfo, 2008

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The Next Israel?

The News: Both Ecuador and Venezuela have shut down their embassies in Bogota to protest Colombia’s violations of Ecuador’s territorial sovereignty. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa ordered troops to Colombia’s border. Chavez warned Colombia never to carry out such a raid in Venezuela.

Hugo Chavez: “This could be the start of a war in South America, because, for example, if they ever think of doing something like that in Venezuela, President Uribe, I will send my jet fighters. We are not going to accept that Colombia become the next Israel in our land.”

The Note: Chavez is alluding to Israel "advisors" helping out the Columbian military and Israel citizens illegally selling arms to the Columbian paras

©Barfo, 2008

Zionist Math

The Headline: Israel: “No Moral Equation” Between Palestinians and Israelis

The News: Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livini called on the international community to support Israel’s actions. Said Livini: “The world should respect any action taken by Israel in order to defend its citizens. I would like to say that I cannot accept condolences saying that there are victims, both sides. Well, yes, there are victims both sides, but there is no moral equation between these terrorists who are looking for civilians to kill and between the Israeli soldiers who are looking for the terrorists.”

The Note: Nor is their any moral equation between a hand held stick of dynamite and a Jumbo Depleted Uranium Block Buster.... now is there? The United State has been totally moronized by AIPAC, but I wonder how long the rest of the world will continue to respect anything Israel does or palavers.


©Barfo, 2008

Cultural Metastasis

The Headline: Utah Boss Accused of Waterboarding Worker

The News: The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting a supervisor at a motivational coaching business in Utah has been accused of waterboarding an employee in front of his sales team. According to a lawsuit, the supervisor poured water from a gallon jug over the mouth and nostrils of one of his workers. At the conclusion of the waterboarding, the supervisor allegedly told the sales team that he wanted them to work as hard on making sales as their coworker had worked to breathe while he was being waterboarded. David Ellis, the president of the company Prosper, defended his staff. Ellis said, “It was meant to be a team-building exercise. Everybody was . . . involved and enthusiastic.”

The Note: A perfect of example of the the Bush Cancer metastasizes throughout society

©Barfo, 2008

Psychosis, Policy and Purim

The image of Israel is that of a big body-built bouncer holding a five year old by the scruff of its neck, smashing its teeth out, bloodying its nose, and kneeing it in the stomach as “deterrence” for being kicked in the shin.

In researching the previous post on Israel's threatened holocaust, I logged onto Ha’artez in order to find the exact quote from an israeli source. After doing so, I perused the discussion blog, which -- no surprise at this point -- was nothing more that a long roll of murderous, hate-filled self pity.

“ The trouble with Israel is that they keep pussy-footing around and bombing empty buildings. For every rocket attack on Israel their should be a 2-3 day rocket barrage in return, right over the Gazan`s heads.”

“ Ring Gaza with artillery and bombard from a stand-off distance as a direct answer to rockets. Time this for maximum embarrassment of Condi"

“ The past two years have been devoted to this still born process, called the peace process. ... . We were told that we had to be patient, that Sderot had to be valiant, and her children had to suffer in silence ... People have the impudence to tell Israelis that they have to suffer in silence because otherwise the Palestinians will stop cooperating in this non-existent peace process. The world always liked its Jews quiet and pliant. The world, the "civilized" one, would like nothing better than to see the end to this troublesome country of the Jews. They just dare not say it in public. That would be bad form."

There was a smaller percentage of posts that decried the “holocaust” remarks as a tactical public relations error. I counted only one or two Jewish/Israeli comments that pointed out the moral contradiction and hypocrisy of Israeli policy.

These few examples are illustrative of the mass psychosis that has taken hold of Israel. This is a phenomenon that has been noted and decried by high-ranking Israelis themselves. As far back as 2001, Ami Alayon, the head of the Israeli secret service (Shin Bet) until 2000, told Le Monde that “In Israel, nobody is dealing with reality anymore.” He debunked the self-deluding propaganda that Arafat had maliciously turned down a magnanimous offer. “This is ridiculous”. (Le Monde 12/22/01) At the other end of the political spectrum Uri Avneri, Class of ‘48 and leftist journalist, has repeatedly decried Israel’s “self-brainwashing, paranoia and suspicion. In between, there are anonymous people like “Esther” who lamented on the discussion board that Ha’aretz had deleted her posts mentioning the three Hamas truce offers that the Israeli government rejected before launching its mini (not so bad) holocaust.

The manner of speaking that has been emitting from Israel and zionist quarters around the world has been cribbed from the book of ThugSpeak -- a language of cultivated hardness and brutality. Victor Kemperer, a German Jewish professor who survived Nazi genocide wrote a book about how deeds conform to the mental attitudes carved out by habits of speech Anyone who has truly informed himself about the nazi period can only be shocked by the kind of language coming from jewish lips.

But the truly troubling psychosis is revealed in the comment that the whole rest of the civilized world “would like nothing better than to see the end to this troublesome country of the Jews.” They all hate us!!! Therefore we have to destroy the Palestinians.

This is simply insane; it bears no relation to objective reality. Israel has the United States, the world’s strongest military, firmly in its corner. Pro-Israeli Jews work at the highest levels in all branches of the U.S. government. Laws in France and Germany make it a criminal offence to denigrate or even to question the jewish version of “The Holocaust”. Most western powers have embargoed Iran demanding that it give up nuclear power, while Israel is allowed to maintain a nuclear arsenal. What kind of derangement translates this into “people have the impudence to tell Israelis that they have to suffer in silence” ?

The Israeli author and musician Gilad Atzmon, answered it this way:

“ I tend to believe that the recorded sudden change in the Israeli collective mental mood is nothing but the outcome of the Israeli natural tendency to resolve the schizophrenic mode inherently entangled within Zionism. It is the outcome of the outburst of the conflict between the tribal and the universal that matures into a state of a colossal and complete phobia. The more Israelis want to secure themselves by clinging to isolation, the more death they happen to spread around themselves” [link]

Zionism certainly, but perhaps more. One of the commentators on the Ha’aretz blog wrote:

“ Our Purim Lesson is that Israel needs to do to Hamas what Hamas has promised to do to Israel. Haman hung on the gallows he had built for Mordechai.”

Well, what did Haman do? Haman faithfully carried out the orders of his king Ahasuerus, who ruled, it is said, from Ethiopia to India. On instructions from Mordechai, the Jewish inhabitants refused to bow to the king or to obey his laws . Haman asked the king what he should and the king gave him power to prosecute the offenders.

On orders from Mordechai, Esther concealed her jewishness, worked her way into the king’s affection and by the usual arts turned the king against his own loyal servant. Mordechai moved into the drivers seat had Haman and his sons hanged and then went about merrily slaughtering 75,000 of the kings own non-Jewish subjects..

"Thus the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and slaughter, and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them.” (Esther 9:5 )

Perhaps it could be said that Haman got it in the neck during a palace coup. But what of these 75,000? Nothing in the story gives grounds for believing that they were other than just non-Jewish subjects obeying their king’s laws. The account provides no explanation or evidence that these slaughtered innocents “hated” anyone, at least no more than the assertion that “the whole civilized world” just hates us because we are Jews.

To this day Purim is a jewish holiday. And the actions in Gaza will provide the Israelis with another occasion for holiday that they can call Purim II.

©Barfo, 2008


Post Script. The Guidelines for the Ha’artez discussion board prohibit

“2. Statements terming Israelis or Palestinians and their leaders Nazis, or accusing them of genocide or ethnic cleansing."

Uh.... that makes it kinda difficult to discuss the topic, doesn't it?

It's not a Holocaust even when We say It is.

It was the shock that reverberated around the world. An Israeli defense minister threatened Gaza with a holocaust.

It defied belief that a people who have expended so much talent and effort in educating the world as to the horrors of genocide should turn around and threaten others with what they themselves suffered.

This wretched denouement will come as no surprise to those who recognize in Zionism the same fatal ethnic idolatry that agitated Nazism. The difference between legitimate ethnic pride and pathological ethnic narcissism is always a question of degree. But when self-worthiness passes into self-worship it inevitably ends up worshiping at the expense of others

The reaction among most Israelis and their supporters around the globe fell into two categories: (1) denial that anything so outrageous had been said and (2) an attempt to shift the blame onto the victims.

The back-pedaling of the first would be comic were it not so hypocritical. It was said that the word “shoah” (or holocaust) didn’t always mean holocaust, but was used colloquially to refer to the mess in the kitchen, messed up accounts, and any kind of routine fiasco. Ergo, the Gazans weren’t really be threatened with anything like genocide. Not to worry.

This hasbara (“forensic defense of Israel”) is just an outright lie. Just last year, AIPAC and Jewish Groups in the United State fought tooth and nail to prevent an official commemoration of the “Armenian Holocaust.” Over and over again Jewish spokesmen declaimed that the word “holocaust” had a specific meaning limited to Jewish suffering and the “extent of the horror” would be cheapened by being applied to any else.... except of course as we now learn, the mess in the kitchen, the fiasco at the picnic and other such disasters which afflict ordinary people in daily life.

Just this January, the Jewish Council of Germany was aghast and offended that some Munich carnival goers had been granted a permit to parade on what the they unilaterally decreed was “Holocaust Day.” In short, the efforts of Jews around the world to turn their experience in the second world war into a sacred and taboo event is obvious to anyone who hasn’t had his head buried in the sand. To come now and claim that “holocaust” really didn’t mean that when it was uttered is just bald faced hypocrisy that counts on the world being stupidly suckered.

As for blame shifting; this has become the Standard Performance of Israeli policy. Thus, after protesting that, “in context,” shoah really only meant a doozy paloozy, Israelis followed up with “and they deserved it anyways”. Inevitably the coda to this refrain was that “Israel” was being terrorized by a “rain” of rockets and had to defend itself against, unprovoked attacks and a looming Holocaust™ at the hands of jew-hating Arabs.

mini-shoah in Gaza

The only way Israel can disequilibriate the sheer disporportionality of its conduct is to shuffle and switch the things compared. “Israel” is not under attack in any real sense. Sderot, a small township, near the Gaza border is being harrased by jumbo firecrackers that in a period of four years have killed two, perhaps now three or four people. By way of a true comparison all of Gaza is under siege and daily attack by the Israeli military and In the same period, hundreds verging on a thousand Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli collateral actions. The false equation foisted is revolting.

When all is said and done, no one “deserves” a “holocaust” -- mini or otherwise. The whole point of international law in this area is to put limits on how wars are fought. Those limits mean that whatever else “the enemy” may deserve it deserves not to have its children blasted to bits or to be starved and diseased into submission.

What Israel is doing in Gaza is evil, and has been condemned by the UN, the Secretary General, the World Court and numerous human rights organizations. For years the Israel government has subjected Gaza (and the West Bank) to restrictions that clearly qualified as “genocide” under the definitions studiously worked out by Rafael Lemkin who coined the word.

During the past year, what the sycophant western press labeled as energy cut offs was in fact a program of starvation, as reported here and elsewhere. Earlier this year (2008), it was reported that as a result of Israeli bombings the sewage mains had broken in Gaza. What this means is that the Gazans are being placed in imminent danger of typhus outbreaks.

So? So what the vast heap of “The Holocaust®” documentaries invariably omit to tell, is that the piles of bodies so horrorificly being bulldozed into mass graves were not “gassed” but were people who had died of typhus. Epidemics of typhus had broken out in most camps. For this reason one of the key elements of the judgement at Nuremberg was that the Nazis had done “little or nothing” to prevent the outbreak of typhus. -- and this calculated “negligence” qualified as an intentional war crime.

And now that the sewage mains have broken in Gaza, what does the Israeli government says? It threatens a “fiasco”.

©Barfo, 2008